In a perfect world, Patty Jenkins’ latest film, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, would just about now be wrapping up its box office run. Announced in 2020 for a December 2023 release, the film was set to be a rousing Star Wars adventure about ace Rebel pilots, told by the filmmaker behind Monster and Wonder Woman.
But it’s not a perfect world. Rogue Squadron never got enough behind-the-scenes momentum to start filming and after years of rumors, Disney removed it from its release schedule in late 2022. That was seemingly the end of the line for the film, especially when Lucasfilm announced three new movies in development, none of which were this one. But, in a new interview, Jenkins herself claims she’s back in a galaxy far, far, away.
“I am now back on doing Rogue Squadron,” Jenkins said on the Talking Pictures podcast. “We’ll see what happens. We need to develop and get it to where we’re both super happy with it.” io9 reached out to Lucasfilm multiple times but has yet to receive a comment or clarification. We’ll update this story if or when we do.
Jenkins prefaced that statement with a bit of backstory, which involves another mega franchise she’d been working on. “So, when I left Star Wars to do Wonder Woman 3, I thought maybe I’ll come back to Star Wars after Wonder Woman 3,” Jenkins said. “So we did a deal for that to happen, started a deal, but I thought I was doing Wonder Woman. When that went away, Lucasfilm and I were like, ‘Oh, we gotta finish this deal.’ We finished the deal right as the strike was happening. So I now owe a draft of Star Wars and so we will see what happens there. You know, like, who knows? They have a hard job in front of them of what’s the first movie they’re gonna do. They have other directors who have been working, but I am now, you know, I’m back on doing Rogue Squadron and we’ll see what happens. We need to develop and get it to where we’re both super happy with it.” You can listen to the segment here starting a bit after 42 min.
We don’t know when that podcast was recorded, but even if it was several months ago—which is almost certainly wasn’t— it marks a significant update for Rogue Squadron considering everyone thought it was dead. However, as Jenkins implies, it’s not exactly alive yet either. She simply owes the studio a draft of the script. Whether or not Lucasfilm will like that draft of the script and move forward depends on its quality. All that is clear is the next Star Wars movie is almost certain to be The Mandalorian and Grogu. After that, who knows? Probably the Rey movie? But it’s all still up in the air.
And whether or not Jenkins is being completely honest here, we still find one thing very, very funny. That’s the fact that this movie, which has now been turned on and off more than a light switch, was at some point in good enough shape for Lucasfilm to make a big, public announcement about it happening. There was a video and everything! That was over three years ago. And yet here we are, still talking about maybe getting a good script. So there wasn’t one in the first place when you announced the movie was happening? Isn’t that maybe a symptom of a larger issue?
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